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Chocolate and Peanut Cookies

We’re not big biscuit eaters in this household. However, that’s not to mean that we won’t say “Yes please” when the right one comes along. It was a lazy Saturday and I had a few hours alone in the flat before we were off out for a game of pitch and putt and then back for a movie night with friends (The Wolf of Wall Street – so brilliant, I highly recommend it). Cookies seemed like the ideal film-watching snack, something sweet and satisfying to graze on with a glass of wine in hand.

Every recipe that I have made from the The Londoner’s blog has turned out beautifully, from meatballs to jerk chicken to banana and Nutella muffins. Her recipes are usually simple and straightforward, but with consistently tasty results. In the back of my mind I remembered seeing a chocolate and peanut cookie recipe, so to my laptop and google it was. I only made a few small tweaks to the original cookie dough recipe: I used dark chocolate and salted peanuts since these were what I had in the cupboards, and added peanut butter for an extra peanut hit. I also slightly reduced the amount of vanilla extract as it seemed like a lot for the amount of dough, and, at £5 a small bottle, vanilla extract is a luxury in my kitchen!Ingredients (makes 24 large cookies)
170g butter
200g light brown muscavado sugar
100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
250g plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp peanut butter
80g dark chocolate – I used half dark chocolate chips and half dark chocolate broken into chunks
100g salted peanuts

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 160C fan/180C/Gas Mark 4.
2. Melt the butter over a low heat and mix with the two sugars.
3. Lightly beat the egg and egg yolk with the vanilla and add to the sugar mixture.
4. Weigh out the dry ingredients (flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt) and sift. Or, if you’re too lazy to sift (read: I’m too lazy to sift) give the flour a light whisk: hey presto, lump-free aerated flour! Add the wet ingredients and the peanut butter and mix well.
5. Add the chocolate and peanuts and mix thoroughly so the ingredients are evenly distributed.
6. Line a couple of baking trays with greaseproof paper. Wet your hands as this will make it easier to roll the cookie dough without getting it stuck to your hands. Roll the cookies into balls, roughly the size of a golf ball or a little larger, and place on the baking trays. Remember that the cookies will spread quite a lot as they cook so generously space them apart – this meant I had to do mine in two batches, so place the dough in the fridge while you wait for the first batch to cook if you need to do the same.
7. Use a fork to gently press the cookies down. Note: if you don’t do this last step then the cookies will take a little longer to cook, so be aware of this.
8. Bake for 12 minutes and remove onto a wire rack to cool. The cookies will seem incredibly soft when first out the oven but will firm up slightly as they cool, so don’t worry.
These cookies were deeeelicious. The texture is crisp on the edges, but satisfyingly chewy in the middle just as a good cookie should be. The dark chocolate chunks melt slightly and stay gooey after cooling, while the peanuts add a lovely saltiness to the cookies. Salty and sweet is just the best combination right?
I think it’s safe to say that the cookies were a hit: David took a doggy bag of cookies away with him after movie night, Ross has been taking them to work every day since I baked them and I took a couple for some kids I look after: one inhaled the whole cookie in about 30 seconds and the other savoured every mouthful (ate half before swimming, wrapped the rest up, ate half of the half after swimming, wrapped the rest up, ate the final quarter when we got home – unbelievable restraint for a 6 year old, how do I achieve that?!). Both declared “These cookies are even better than the ones from the Commie Pool Café”. If that’s not high praise indeed I don’t know what is.

5 thoughts on “Chocolate and Peanut Cookies”

Argh this is such a temptation!! But I’ve given up sugar indefinitely D: my flatmate and I used to make huge bowls of cookie dough at uni and just nibble it raw all night long! I’ll come back to this when I’m back on the sweet stuff and actually cook it this time – crunchy edges and chewy middles are the best! xxx La Lingua : Food, Life, Love, Travel, Friends, Italy

Hi Lucy! Thanks for your comment – sorry that the recipe came with bad timing! If you do make the cookies, you can always reduce the quantities and not make all 24… 😉 less temptation lying around the house once you’ve had the first few. They are VERY sweet, so I think you’d get away with reducing the sugar content a bit…but, in my my opinion, if you’re going to have a cookie you might as well do it properly!
Anna
PS – I love the pictures on your blog! Beautiful!